THE WORLD: SUSPICION; From Moscow, a New Chill

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: May 27, 2007

FROM the day Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer, died of polonium poisoning in London last November, officials in Russia treated the investigation of his death as if it were simply a matter of bad public relations. They dismissed accusations of Russian involvement as nonsense fabricated by President Vladimir V. Putin's enemies.

Britain last week punctured Russia's strategy. A decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to accuse another former K.G.B. officer of the murder and demand his extradition pushed Russia out of the international court of public opinion and into the international court of law.

If recent history is any guide, Russia will not fare well, and the consequences could be profound, deepening the political, diplomatic and social rift between Russia and its European neighbors. In proceeding after proceeding, Russia's actions have withered under the scrutiny of international justice. As a result, the very concepts of law and justice have become touchstones for larger fears about how Mr. Putin amasses and uses power, and whether he is returning Russia to habits that brought Europe grief in the past.

The implicit criticism in these proceedings has profoundly irritated Mr. Putin's Kremlin, and that defensiveness has, in turn, only further disappointed those in the West who once hoped Russia would emerge from the Soviet collapse as a member in good standing of the club of democratic, law-abiding nations.

In Mr. Putin's seven years as president, a Soviet-style cynicism about the law has returned, one in which justice, like diplomacy, is simply a series of political calculations laced with ulterior motives, as opposed to a dispassionate search for truth, fairness and accountability.

The cynicism has been a hallmark of Mr. Putin's presidency, allowing him to consolidate power by using the law to weaken the media, marginalize opposition parties and imprison political enemies. It is now being used to paint Britain as wielding its judicial system in Mr. Litvinenko's murder in the same way Russia often wields its own -- manipulating the law for political ends.

On Thursday, Mr. Putin suggested that criticism of Russia's record on democracy and human rights was just an effort by the West to make Russia give ground on a host of international disputes, from Iran to missile defenses to independence for Kosovo. ''One of the aims is to make Russia more pliable on issues that have nothing to do with democracy or human rights,'' he told reporters while visiting Luxembourg.

This is at the heart of what bothers many in the West about Mr. Putin's Russia. Rather than embracing the common legal values that united Europe after the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Mr. Putin shuns them as weapons intended to weaken Russia.

Take, for example, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France -- the judicial body of the Council of Europe, which Russia joined in 1996. It has become a court of last resort for Russians seeking justice and compensation for abuses, usually at the hands of the police or military. In 2006, Russians filed 10,569 cases, 22 percent of the court's caseload. Nearly half were found inadmissible, but the court found against the Russian authorities in 102 cases in 2006.

Increasingly, Russia is showing signs of impatience. The Parliament has refused to ratify a new charter intended to streamline the court's work, blocking changes Russia agreed to in 2004 (before it started losing so many cases). In January, Mr. Putin criticized ''the politicization of court rulings.''

''They simply do not understand that the problem lies with our justice system,'' Irina Yasina, the former head of Open Russia, a civic organization founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and since closed, told the newspaper Kommersant in March. ''They are used to the fact that in our courts you can cut some sort of deal.''

The court's decisions could become more explosive, forcing Russia into new conflicts with the West. One appeal now being considered involves Russia's prosecutorial destruction of Yukos Oil and the jailing of Mr. Khodorkovsky, its chairman, a legal assault at the heart of Mr. Putin's campaign to consolidate state control of the energy sector. On Tuesday, Mr. Litvinenko's widow, Marina, filed a complaint with the court over the Russian handling of her husband's death, a murder that has sent a chilling message to the community of Putin critics in London and elsewhere that exile might not protect them from Russian retribution.

In the Litvinenko case, Russia swiftly restated its refusal to extradite the accused suspect, Andrei K. Lugovoi. (Mr. Lugovoi has denied any involvement.) Russia's Constitution forbids the extradition of its citizens, but Britain pre-emptively emphasized Russia's international commitments, including a 1957 convention on extraditions and an agreement between prosecutors from both countries (signed only days before Mr. Litvinenko died), to cooperate ''in the sphere of extradition.''

Britain's decision put Russia on the spot, which is where Mr. Putin loathes to be. Already, politicians and the state media here have been stoking the kind of anti-Western nationalism that was recently exemplified by the furor over Estonia's decision to relocate a Soviet-era monument in its capital.

The Kremlin and the prosecutor's office here said that Russia's own parallel investigation into the Litvinenko case -- or what it called the attempted murder by poisoning of Mr. Lugovoi and an associate, Dmitri V. Kovtun -- was continuing. From the start, though, its focus has been less on Mr. Lugovoi than on the exiled Russians who many here have suggested orchestrated the poisoning to discredit Russia.

''It's a terrible murder,'' a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in a telephone interview. ''We're trying to find out those who stand behind it.''

Russia's problem is that few -- here or abroad -- have much faith in the impartiality of its justice. Its prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade European governments to arrest and extradite suspects fleeing Russian charges. They include several of Mr. Litvinenko's associates, notably Boris Berezovsky, the tycoon who is Public Enemy No. 1 here, and Akhmed Zakayev, a leader of Chechnya's separatists.

They may or may not have committed crimes, but in Russia, there would be little doubt of their convictions.

Ole Solvang, executive director of the Stichting Russian Justice Initiative, a nonprofit group that helps Russians file suit in Strasbourg, said that in Russia's courts and prosecutors' offices, ''There are still significant problems: There are still instances where judges and prosecutors try to guess what decision is politically the right one.''

Tellingly, political motivations were what a commentator for the official Russian Information Agency, Vladimir Simonov, saw in Britain's latest decision. He explained them as a political maneuver by Tony Blair as he hands over power to Gordon Brown. ''The political aspects of the charges are glaringly obvious,'' he wrote. ''It is very likely that the prime minister deliberately put his political heir in a situation where the latter would have to formulate his policy towards Russia under the strain of current tensions between the two countries.''

Most British would no doubt scoff. By the same standard, one could also ask: what does Mr. Litvinenko's case presage for Russia's presidential election next March?